Monday, 2 January 2017

An Islamic State
car bomb killed 24 people in Baghdad's Sadr City district on Monday and
the militants also attacked two police stations in the city of Samarra
as Iraqi forces fought to oust the group from Mosul, its last major
stronghold in Iraq.At least
four other attacks across Baghdad, some also claimed by Islamic State,
killed nine more people earlier in the day, bringing the total death
toll from bombings in the capital over the past three days to more than
60.

In the attacks in Samarra,
about 100 km (60 miles) north of Baghdad, security sources said multiple
gunmen wearing suicide vests took over two police stations, killing at
least seven policemen. The mayor
of Samarra, Mahmoud Khalaf, said security forces had regained control,
killing at least six assailants, but declined to comment on the number
of casualties on the government side.The pro-Islamic State news agency Amaq said the militants had executed some policemen.The
upsurge in violence comes as U.S-backed Iraqi forces try to drive
Islamic State from the northern city of Mosul, where the militants are
putting up fierce resistance.Islamic
State has lost most of the territory it seized in a blitz across
northern and western Iraq in 2014 and ceding Mosul would probably spell
the end of its self-styled caliphate. But it would still be capable of
waging a guerrilla-style insurgency in Iraq and plotting or inspiring
attacks on the West."The
terrorists will attempt to attack civilians in order to make up for
their losses, but we assure the Iraqi people and the world that we are
able to end terrorism and shorten its life," Prime Minister Haider
al-Abadi said after talks with visiting French President Francois
Hollande.

REVENGEIslamic State said Monday's
attacks in Baghdad were revenge for "the repeated targeting of health
institutions in Nineveh province" by the U.S.-led coalition backing
Iraqi forces.That was an apparent
reference to two air strikes last month on hospitals in eastern Mosul,
one where Iraqi forces were under attack and another which the U.S.
military said had targeted militants sitting in a van. At least one of
the strikes may have caused civilian casualties.

After Monday's attacks U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirkby reaffirmed Washington's commitment to support Iraq.
"These
vicious acts of mass murder are a sobering reminder of the need to
continue coalition operations against Daesh and to eliminate the threat
this terrorist group poses," he said, using the Arabic name for the
group.
Monday's
blast in Sadr City hit a busy square where day laborers typically
gather. Islamic State said in an online statement it had targeted
Shi'ite Muslims, whom it considers apostates. Sixty-seven people were
wounded in the blast. Nine of
the victims were women in a passing minibus, whose charred bodies were
visible inside the burnt-out remains of the vehicle. Blood stained the
ground nearby. A parked car bomb
targeting a Sunni religious figure near a mosque in western Baghdad
killed five people, and another blast close to a hospital in the center
killed one civilian and wounded nine, police and medical sources said.
In
the southeastern Zaafraniya district, two more people were killed and
seven wounded when a car bomb exploded. A bomb affixed to a vehicle in
the eastern area of Baladiyat killed one person and wounded four.